Easter Sunday 2017, Southwell Minster, 11.15am
The Gospel of John 20:1-18
The headlines that have marked the past seven days have added a particularly sombre note to our journey through Holy Week: from last Sunday’s brutal attack on Christians in Egypt, to the horrors in Syria and rising tension with North Korea, and threatsof ‘all-out-war’. So how does what we celebrate here this morning offer hope for our world teetering on the brink of escalating conflicts and division?
At the end of our Gospel reading Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the startling announcement: ‘I have seen the Lord!’This news should rightly trump (if you’ll forgive the pun) every other world headline down through history. It’s no wonder the Gospels convey a sense of the urgencyand momentum suddenly injected into the lives of the apostles that Easter morning. It starts with a lot of running around.
Mary runs first to Simon Peter and the other disciple (probably John) to tell them the stone had been moved from the entrance to the tomb and the body of Jesus was missing.
Peter and John then run to the tomb as fast as they can. John reaching it first peers from outside, Peter arriving behind has no such reservationand charges right in.
They see thatthe cloths used to wrap Jesus’s battered body are now lying neatly rolled up, as if set aside by one who no longer had use for them.
But as they made their way home they didn’t yet understandwhat itall meant, until a short time later when Mary returned from the garden with her news. Through her tears she had seen two angels and then she met had the risen Lord. At first she mistook him to be the gardener until he spoke her name with such familiar tenderness, ‘Mary.’The implications of their short and intimate conversation were not only life-changing for her they are world-changingfor us.
Here are the two core ingredients of our Easter faith: the evidence of the empty tomb and the personal experience of meeting the risen Jesus; for the apostles that was face-to-face with the risen but not yet ascended Lord, for us their testimony becomes our experience by the Holy Spirit. The dreadful power of sin and death has been once and for all defeated by a far higher power and a love deeper than the foundations of the earth. Jesus is the hope of the nations.
As we gather here this morning in the Minster, 15miles away inthe city the Church of England’s newest church opened its doors at 10 o’clock, to host its first service in the former Neal’s Auction House near the top of the Mansfield Road. I was with them on Maundy Thursday as they prepared for the adventures ahead. Over the past few months 80 or so have come together to form the core of the church.
The average age is24, though it’s open to all ages, and I did spot one or two who must be well into their 30s.
When we were trying to decide what to call the church I checked some old maps to see if the hill had a name. For at least 400 years until the mid-19th century it was known as Gallows Hill. Because just outside the perimeter of the city on the brow of the hill gallows were permanently erected, serving as a stark warning to anyone entering Nottingham.
The last public execution took place there in 1827. And fairly soon after houses started to be built on the hill as the population of the city rapidly expanded.Of course no one wanted to say they were living on Gallows Hill and so the name was dropped. Then I discoveredthe new name they chose was Mars Hill. Almost certainly inspired by one of the Apostle Paul’s most famous sermon preached in Athens and recorded in Acts 17.
Mars Hill was the Roman name given to the rocky outcrop where he addressed a meeting of the city council(known as the Areogapus). And as helooked out over the city, he drewtheir attention to one of the many objects of worship he’dseen. It bore the inscription ‘to an unknown God’.
So Paul declared, ‘What you worship as unknown I now proclaim to you’.With tender eloquence he told them God ‘is not very far from any of you’. That’s something many modern people need to hear in our cities, towns and villages.
Paulwent on to explain that God invites all people whatever their religious background or culture, to turn to him through the One he raised from the dead to be judge of every nation.
Gallows Hill the place of death became Mars Hill the place of shining resurrection hope for a city full of sinners, like you and me. And though that new name was lost around the turn of the 20th century, this Easter morning a new congregation is meeting thereto worship the risen Jesus.And like every church across thedioceseto announce to all who live and work around or are passing by: ‘God is not very far from any of you’. That is the ministry of this cathedral church that people of allages and ethnicities can encounter for themselves the transforming presence of the risen Christ,like the 37 confirmed here last night.
So why in the end did we decide to call the new church Trinity? Well, because only a few years after the gallows were removeda church was built at the bottom of the Mansfield Road whose parish stretched to the top of the hill. And for over a century Holy Trinity was the most iconic church in the city with its spire rising to 175 feet.
Within ten years of opening in 1840 it had the largest congregation in the east midlands, which included over 1000 attending evensong – what a thought that is.From the outset it also had a compelling vision toserve the youngest and poorest and within 15 years Holy Trinity was educating over 3500 children in the new day schools it established.
Sadly a century later with the migration out of the city centre the church declined and by 1954 the decaying building was considered surplus to requirement. It was demolished to make way for new development, around what is today known as Trinity Square.
In 2017 it’s once again an area heaving with students and young people, each one with immense potential but growing up in a broken and divided and spiritually confused world. As those who share faith in the risen Lord Jesus, we have a message of shining hope for that rising generation. And Trinity church is now back to help bring that good news.
Along with churches everywhere, we renewtoday our confidence in this gospel. And I pray that in our mission we may sharethe joyful momentum and urgency that marked the wonder of that first Easter morning. And in our own journey of faith to expect to encounter the power of the risen Lord in fresh ways, for he is not far from any of us or our world in its desperate need.
The good news of this Easter morning is the only hope for every nation, because only the power of the crucified and risen Jesus can bring us peace with God and reconcile us to our enemies. That doesn’t mean we will never be compelled to take up arms or undertake military action. We mustconfront injustice and challenge those ideologies that seek to distort or destroy the dignity of God’s image in every person.
But through Christ our motivation should never be aggression for the purpose of domination, but justice for the goal of setting people free. Free to know God and live a life of love as Christ loved us.
So may the Lord bless you as you share the momentousjoy of this Easter morning, bless the new Trinity Church meeting in Nottingham, and bless the church in Egypt, in Syria, in secret in North Korea, and in every nation across the world. Amen.
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